picklesman

It really is an amazing flavour but so incredibly frustrating to eat due to how little there is of it!

(I’m talking about the pulp around the seeds, not the flesh right under the skin of the pod, which I’ve never tried eating)

I disagree. After drying for a few days they just taste like unsweetened chocolate to me. Very similar to the cacao nibs I used to purchase, which are indeed just broken up seeds.

As someone in the market for my first wearable, which devices are better for health tracking? thanks!

indeed it would be prohibitively expensive

I basically replaced all forms of entertainment with reading. I find there is also less of a barrier to start since the audio part makes it feel slightly more passive.

I still watch movies / tv / YouTube occasionally but I’m much more selective.

As for pausing and rereading, I find a good pair of earbuds helps me do that pretty effortlessly, and I tend to do it often towards the beginning of a book.

What you’re describing sounds more like studying / reading textbooks and is totally valid, but not the type of reading I’m talking about, which is mostly for curiosity and entertainment.

Yes, it feels very similar. Except speeding up a movie seems absolutely insane to me, whereas with a book it just feels like matching my mental ingestion rate.

Indeed it keeps me on pace and paying attention.

Finding the right speed takes some experimentation. Too slow and my mind will wander, too fast and I can't absorb the material / don't have enough time to ponder.

I use Libby and I have a few library cards and an audible subscription.

There are also other less ethical ways that I use, though to compensate I buy the books I really like in physical form.

I'm the same way for fiction, but there's a certain class of non-fiction audiobooks (memoirs, (auto)biography, essays, etc) that works very well for me even when doing light chores.

It's made me much more selective about what podcasts I listen to, since I've realized just how information-poor most of them are.

I do still enjoy a good interview, or even just the para-social pleasure of "hanging out" with hosts I like, but I'm now doing so consciously and not by default.

Yeah I noticed when I'm reading in a place with a lot of other stuff going on I usually need to go more slowly due to ambient distractions.

As for screening I've never consciously asked myself what I wanted to get out of it but I like the idea.

Oh for sure. I listen with wireless buds with a huge button (Jabra Elite 4, sadly no longer made) so pausing/unpausing takes almost zero effort.

For particularly dense passages I'll just slow down the audio as needed as well.

Even for fiction I find myself starting more slowly as I get to know the characters, and then speeding up as I want to.

Depends highly on the subject matter

I read 189 books last year, mostly due an accidental discovery.

I have a lot of trouble reading in noisy places, since I get distracted easily. My habit would be to put on some very minimal / low-information ambient music like Stars of the Lid and it worked well.

Then one day I randomly decided to put the audiobook on while reading and it was a revelation. After adjusting the audio rate to match my reading speed (usually between 2-3x depending on narrator / subject) it allowed me to totally lock in. Both "inputs" seem to reinforce each other. I researched and apparently people call this "immersive reading".

I find I can (just) listen to (easy) non-fiction like biographies, memoirs etc since they don't usually require much deep thought. But for fiction or harder/denser non fiction I read and listen at the same time.

Check out dbdiagram.io though I don’t know if it handles views either, I never tried.